In this essay, originally published anonymously in The Westminster Review (1856), George Eliot examines the state of women’s fiction in her time. She lamentingly argues that absurd and banal novels, written by well-to-do women of her time, do great disservice for the overall appreciation of women’s intellectual capacities. Eliot divides ‘silly novels by lady novelists’ into several distinct categories: the mind-and-millinery species, the oracular type and the white-neck-cloth variety. She writes with characteristic sharp wit and insightful intellect in this scathing (but not unfeeling) feminist critique of ‘Silly Novels by Lady Novelists’.

This edition includes illustrations from the books critiqued by Eliot, along with annotations. 

George Eliot (Marian/Mary Ann Evans) was born in Warwickshire England in 1819. She went on to become one of England’s most astute nineteenth century writers. Eliot is the author of celebrated novels including Adam Bede (1859), Middlemarch (1871-1872) and Daniel Deronda (1876). She also published non-fiction essays, poems and short stories, and was a skilled translator of German-language philosophy, including works by Strauss, Feuerbach and Spinoza. Eliot’s writing is characterised by gritty realism entwined with deep empathy and keen insight into human life.

Sarah Bacaller is a writer, researcher and audiobook producer from Melbourne, Australia.

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